Growing up: Carly Telford
The former Lionesses goalkeeper takes a look back at where her love for football was first forged
My earliest experience of football really came from just watching my dad pack up his bag every Saturday and Sunday to go off and play.
He was meant to be pretty decent when he was younger and he was even friends with Paul Gascoigne growing up, so that’s pretty cool for a Geordie to be able to say.
We always had footballs in the garden and I'd also get taken along to games with him so I was exposed to football from a very young age.
My dad was a painter and decorator by trade and as a family we moved down to Bethnal Green during the London housing boom.
His best mate down there had three kids who all loved playing football. One of them was a lad called Donny Barnard, who actually went on to play professionally for Leyton Orient, so I was kicking around with good players from a very early age.
We moved back up to Newcastle when I was about seven and that's when we first started looking for more football for me to get involved in.
It took a little while to build up a posse of like-minded kids, but after a while the boys knew to come and knock on my door for a kick about on the estate which was great and we used to play for hours on end.
I got really lucky at Tanfield School because my headteacher, Mr Patterson, was more than happy for me to play with the boys and I ended up being one of the school captains right through the age groups.
I can't ever really remember having any issues being a girl playing the sport, other than when some of the parents on the sidelines used to look at me a bit funny and whisper to each other, but it never bothered me.
I guess my first break came when I was playing football in an old abandoned container with my brother and a guy just came over to invite me to a girls’ trial for Chester-Le-Street, which was a club just down the road.
It was in the middle of the winter then and my mum stuck a big woolly Sunderland goalkeepers jersey on me to keep me warm, so when I turned up I was obviously asked straight away: 'Are you a goalkeeper?'
I said: ‘Not really, but I can do if you want me to.’
And that was it, I never came out again.
Bill and Pauline ran the teams there right through the age groups up to the senior team and that was where I really found my feet playing football.
There's a photo below of the players from Chester-le-Street. Can you spot me?
We used to play round-robin style football where we'd play about ten games in a day against all the local teams and that was where I first ran into Jill Scott and Steph Houghton, who were both playing for Boldon.
I had no idea at the time that some years later, we'd go to World Cups together and all be in the USA in 2019 to win the SheBelieves Cup!
We had a good little team ourselves and shortly after that we all got scouted to join Sunderland's centre of excellence.
That was my first experience of being involved with a top women's team, but I was still treating football quite casually because back then there was no such thing as professional women's football.
I'm very proud of my early football days but it also makes me quite sad because there has been very little investment in women's football in the north east and now it almost doesn't exist anymore.
But I was really lucky that doors were starting to open for me and I got invited to play for a regional camp to see if I was good enough to get into the international set up – and that was my first experience of rejection.
I remember bursting into tears when I received the letter and it felt like my world had ended, because I was 14 years old and playing with the first team so I thought I was at the pinnacle.
From there, it only made me more determined though and I was invited to start training with the Newcastle United men's academy and I worked really closely with Simon Smith, who went on to coach goalkeepers for England and Newcastle’s first team.
That's where I learned the basics and fundamental skills of goalkeeping, because up until then it had just been a case of stopping the ball going in the net and shooting practice.
I've always said that if I can don the black and white of Newcastle one day then I will, because they've got such a loyal fan base and I'd love to go back and play for them.
I was there for six months and it was probably the biggest learning curve of my career - after that I was training four or five times a week and playing every weekend, and loving every minute of it.
At the next regional camp I got selected and began playing with the England U17s and then began to play more regularly for Sunderland.
I owe a lot of thanks to Mick Mulhern, Alan Snowdon and Mark Noor for the time they invested in me at Sunderland too.
When I look back now I realise how much time I actually spent with these people and how much they helped build me up as a person as well as a player.
There’s been bumps in the road along way of course, and I can remember a game with England U19s, when I was still only 15 or 16 and had been fast tracked into the older group.
It was a game against Ireland and I ended up dislocating my shoulder which was obviously a blow at the time. Aside from the injury, I actually remember that game really well because Pauline Cope was there and she wished me luck before the game.
But when I first got to represent England, even at junior level, I think that's when it fully hit home that I was going to actually become a footballer because before then I always felt a bit like a young girl mixing it with the seniors.
Now, it's something which I'm so proud to do and of everything I've achieved so far.
Every step of the journey has played a part in where I now find myself.
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